Claims that the Irish State “outsourced” education to the Catholic Church, made by Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly  have been roundly rejected by a leading cleric.

Fr Michael Drumm, the head of the Catholic Schools Partnership, said that Ms O’Reilly’s comment’s made at this week’s McGill Summer School, showed that she was out of touch with the reality of Irish education.

Delivering the annual John Hume Lecture, Ms O’Reilly said that the State’s leaders, on achieving independence had “promptly franchised” responsibility for the education and health systems to the Catholic Church.

She said: “When we did eventually achieve our independence, the successors of Mr Pearse and others of that vintage, promptly franchised the state to a private organisation called the Catholic Church shedding in particular its responsibility for the education and health systems and thereby allowing little actual space for the elected leaders of this republic to play THEIR role in pursuing the happiness and prosperity of the nation.

“As recently as last week, the State and the Catholic Church were still squabbling over who should pick up the tab for the distinct non-cherishing of the nation’s children that endured for much of the lifetime of this republic.”  
However Fr Drumm rejected this analysis.  

“The Ombudsman’s general comments on education in a republic do not properly represent the reality in Irish education,” he said.

Fr Drumm pointed out the fact that “Ireland’s primary and post-primary education system predates the 1916 Rising”. He said the apparent suggestion that there is no room for Catholic schools in a civic republic “is clearly untrue”.

He also rejected Mrs O’Reilly’s suggestion that the State was “reclaiming” education insisting that Education Minister Ruairi Quinn “has made clear his wishes for a greater degree of plurality in the current system and has acknowledged the excellent contribution of denominational schools in the education system.”

Meanwhile, Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD has said that denominational education was not compatible with a republican system of government.

And he said that Irish education was a segregated system.

Also speaking at the McGill Summer School, Mr O’Riordáin said that “the uncomfortable reality “ was “that we have a segregated education system – segregated with a small ‘s’ but segregated nonetheless”.  

He said: “We do not have a state education system; rather we have a State-funded system. We have allowed a situation to evolve where the determining ethos governing the vast bulk of our State-funded schools is a religious one.

“We have out-sourced education to patron bodies who continue to have huge influence over the manner in which our children are educated.  

“We are comfortable with children of different religions being taught in different schools and allowing those same schools to legally discriminate against children based on their religion in enrolment policies, and in the employment of those who they feel might undermine their ethos.

“Rather than a Republican ideal of being educated together, education and schooling remains one of the most socially divisive elements in Irish society.”

Mr O’Riordain is the former principal of a Catholic primary school.